I'm new to this forum and this is my first try to get some help for my 'somewhat' annoying problem:

My cd-burner worked fine some days ago, and now it does not, and I haven't changed a thing!

I use Nero 5.5 combined with an internal Teac w540e CD-Burner on windows XP. My system is high-end, so I meet all possible requirements you could throw at me. I have updated my burner Firmware to the latest version.

When I burn an audio-CD, the burn process completes successfully.

However, when I play the CD in 'any' cd-player, the sound is terrible. The right channel is perfect and sounds like the original mp3's I burned off my harddrive, the left channel is extremely distorted, playing about 3 times louder than the right. Now, when I say extremely distorted, I'm talking about high-pitched white-noise, where you 'barely' hear the music in the background.

I have tried to play around with some of the burn-settings, but I'm not as educated when it comes to cd-burning, so I really have no idea what I'm doing.

First of all, can anyone help me with this? Second, are there special drivers or codecs I need for this operation?

(on my old motherboard, the burner worked fine. after upgrading to a newer motherboard, the burner started acting up, burning coasters, so I installed standalone ATAPI drivers, and this seemed to fix it.. until a few days ago, when this stupid error hit me like a rotten egg..)

Yes, you are correct. I have the MP3's in the folder-view to the right, and I drag them over to the compilation-window on the left.

I have upgraded to the latest version of the Nero Burning ROM (5.5), but if I wish to upgrade to the 6.0 version, I will be forced to buy it again, even though I already own a serial for the 5.0 version.

Personally, I don't think the problem is with the Nero software, since the program has worked for me before. I think it has something to do with the audio, the audio-convertion or possibly, the audio codecs.

I mean, the right-channel is perfect. The problem is with the left channel only.. and that strikes me as a bit weird.

Now I have installed the ForceASPI drivers, version 4.60, and I have also installed Nero 6 Reloaded, and still.. the same happens when I try to burn AudioCD's from MP3-files. The LEFT channel is full of distortion and white-noise, the RIGHT channel is perfect, just like the MP3-original.

If I can't fix this stupid bug I will be forced to buy another burner..